Microsoft and Linux vendor Novell are marking the second anniversary of their controversial alliance today with a series of announcements. The companies say they signed up more than 200 joint customers under their partnership, up from around 70 in the first year.

In the first year, the companies touted big customers such as Wal-Mart, BMW and Siemens. In the past year, the customer base has diversified into areas such as China, Spain, Portugal, Singapore and Japan, said Susan Heystee, Novell's general manager of global alliances.

"It's really across the globe and cross-industry," Heystee said earlier this week. "Not just global companies, but a number of very strong local governments, as well."

The alliance has long been a bone of contention in the open-source software community primarily because of the legal indemnification each company has granted the other's customers under the agreement. The provision protecting Novell's customers from patent-infringement claims is seen as implicit support for Microsoft's allegation that Linux and other open-source programs violate its intellectual property.

The pact also includes commitments to make Linux and Windows work more smoothly together.

Under the five-year agreement, signed in November 2006, Microsoft bought a large supply of support certificates for Novell Suse Enterprise Linux, which it has been reselling to customers. As part of the latest announcement, Novell says it has invoiced more than 70 percent of the certificates purchased by Microsoft, ahead of the expected pace.

Today's announcements include plans for an upcoming beta release of Moonlight, a Linux-based implementation of Microsoft's Silverlight interactive technology.

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